A majority of the buzz today about using social media for business marketing focuses exclusively on strategies limited to a few closed networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn. But there’s a whole world out there, and while social media and especially Facebook have become essential aspects of modern advertising, they are more effective when used as part of a broader overall internet marketing strategy. This article explains why in demand social media channels are an excellent tool for SEO and why Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. work best when used in conjunction with a well-designed website, content, and SEO strategy.

Link Building the Old Fashioned Way

Prior to 2012 a large aspect of search engine optimization involved link building. After on-page SEO was performed and website code and page text had been optimized to perfection, the next goal for internet marketing experts was to achieve as many back links as possible to a website. The result of these activities was increased search engine position, with search engines like Google giving higher rank to websites with large numbers of backlinks. Over time, many shady practices developed to acquire backlinks through paid link acquisition, duplicate article submission, link exchanges, and robotic blog spamming methods. Today, these practices have been made obsolete.

Search engines have become smarter with recent algorithm updates. They have been programmed to filter between relevant and irrelevant backlinks easily and are no longer fooled by spamming blind link building robots. Penguin, a Google update, has penalized millions of websites worldwide for having bad quality and irrelevant back links pointing to their website.

Social Media – Not Your Father’s Link Building

The introduction of social media into web advertising has drastically changed the landscape of link building and website promotion. Since the primary purpose of any SEO campaign is to drive traffic to a website, SEO experts have taken to social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more. These social media channels have changed the entire concept of inbound link building.

The real potential of these social media tools is sharing. Rather than trying to spam the internet with links to a website, attaching a single link to helpful information in social media can later evolve into hundreds, thousands, or millions of links through social sharing. Experienced internet marketers focus on social networks to help build awareness of website content and use networks of people in social media to help spread the word. Whether the goal is driving traffic, lead generation, or creating instant buzz for a brand or products, social media is an exceptional medium to help quickly multiply the inbound links to associated content on a business website.

It’s All About the Content

Practically everyone wants friends and family to share and engage with their social media posts, but it’s tough and doesn’t happen very often for most. To really become successful at posting social media content that others want to share you need to find compelling content for your readers to share. That’s where a blended strategy involving the company website, SEO, content creation, and social media can be extremely valuable.

If you plan to promote your brand or business online, consider implementing a strategy to do it right from the start. With everything clicking all at once, your strategy should:

• Include all social media properties applicable to your business with branding that matches the official website
• Include a plan to acquire new social media followers on all platforms
• Include a plan to create quality content relevant to your business on a regular basis
• Include plans to distribute the content socially in a way that promotes sharing
• Include a strategy to tie the content to your website for inbound link generation
• Include a website SEO review process to increase visibility in search
• Carry over SEO research from the website to use similar terminology on your social media pages

Combining social media with a good website and SEO plan will result in guaranteed maximum online visibility for your brand or business website. Better yet, when you hire the right team of internet marketing experts, you can save a lot of money over a piecemeal approach.

The branding that goes into your website can, in many cases, easily carry over to social media channels so it makes sense to a hire a company that has the expertise to help you with both website design and social media all at once. The SEO that goes into your website should also be applied to your social media channels, so the right company should be able to provide both SEO optimization and social media optimization (SMO). Sharable content should be created for both social media and website distribution. An internet marketing company that has a firm grasp of content creation and blogging can help you tie great content together with social media and SEO in a cost effective way.

seenBEST is one such company with expertise in all involved areas: SEO, website design, social media, blogging, content creation, and internet marketing strategy. Rather than focusing on just social media without SEO or vice versa,  we create powerful custom solutions that are comprehensive in scope and uniquely tailored to your goals and needs. Give us a call for a free one hour consultation to discuss the creation of a unique internet marketing strategy for your business.